Acquired Waze
102 snips
Aug 3, 2016 A hacked GPS project in Israel grows into Waze, a community-powered navigation app, just as Apple Maps stumbles spectacularly. The scramble among Apple, Facebook, and Google to acquire Waze reveals the rising stakes of location data, mobile advertising, and the road to autonomous cars.
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Waze Origin
- Waze originated when Ehud Shabtai hacked his GPS to share speed camera locations.
- After receiving a cease and desist, he created FreeMap Israel, a crowdsourced map.
Series A Misstep
- Waze CEO Noam Bardin admitted their Series A valuation was a mistake.
- He believes it hindered their ability to remain independent, unlike Facebook or Google.
Silicon Valley Stores
- Ben Gilbert recalls seeing the We Are Mibo storefront in Mountain View.
- It highlighted the unusual Silicon Valley trend of tech companies in retail spaces.
